


No Fear of Depths

by saltylikecrait



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, F/M, Falling In Love, Fluff, Gift Giving, Interspecies Relationship(s), Interspecies Romance, Merman!Finn, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-10
Updated: 2019-05-10
Packaged: 2020-01-23 02:58:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18540904
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltylikecrait/pseuds/saltylikecrait
Summary: An orphan girl rescues a creature she thought only existed in myths.





	No Fear of Depths

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Finnrey Friday! I've been waiting to post this fic for six months! Originally, this was set to be published in January, but I decided to wait on it when I saw a weekly theme for "Oceans" and remembered that Mermay was a thing.

The cold air made her feel sluggish as she wandered the beach, staring down at the sand as she walked it up and down. The wind hit her uncovered face, but with her hair secure in her usual three buns, it wasn’t a nuisance, but she definitely planned to curl up by the fire when she got home. Some days, no matter how many blankets she piled on or how long she sat by a fire, Rey never felt like she recovered from working outside all day. Her feet always seemed to remain ice cold when the rest of her was warm.

But this was all the work that could be done in this lonely town on this isolated island. If you weren’t lucky enough to run your own shop, you were outside on sand and water, employed by the only man around that gave anyone jobs. There was no complaining and no one would back you if Plutt cheated you out of your wages and hard-earned meals. You worked, or you didn’t eat, that was how it was around here.

Clamming wasn’t bad. Sometimes her legs hurt after standing and walking all day, but she’d rather be on land than out in deeper waters when everything was freezing. Too many people wound up dead in fishing accidents – her parents included. At least Rey found interesting things that washed ashore in her search. She had a collection of interesting shells and agate, once she even found a glass float with colors that reminded her of a tide pool full of life. That stayed hidden away at her little home, under the loose floorboard where she hid the few valuables she had. She could sell it and make some good money off it - it had obviously been made offshore by the hands of a talented glass blower - but Rey didn’t have many nice things and even she believed that a poor girl deserved something beautiful to look at. 

She came across what she was looking for: two small holes parallel to each other in the wet sand. They’d be easy to miss if you weren’t looking for them, but Rey was good at her trade. Taking her rake, she scratched at the surface of the sand, digging deeper into it with each swipe until the domed top of a shell peeked through. Then she used the rake to scoop it up, shaking as much sand off the clam without dropping it back on the ground.

Putting it into her bucket, she realized that she had just collected enough to take back to Plutt’s stall and call it a day. Plutt would give her the small amount of wages she earned and any catch from the sea that either wasn’t good enough in quality to sell or from a catch that was surplus. There was always something.

So, she headed back to town, not talking to anyone on her way there. People didn't care about the poor orphan girl in sun-bleached linen.

Without a word, she dropped her bucket down in front of her employer and dumped the contents into another container. After looking over her finds and nodding, pleased with her work, Plutt handed her an envelope with a few krona and told her to pick out her dinner. She was happy to see that today’s catch included trout, meaning that someone had ventured up the river today. They might have been bony fish, but she thought they were tastier than some other local catches.

Before she went home, Rey went back to the beach. The other employees preferred not to come out here because of all the rocks, which made it perfect for her, and not just for clamming. In a niche where the rocks of the cliffs weathered away from the tide and wind, a shallow half-cave had been formed. Rey kept her sad excuse of a rowboat there and so far, no one was wiser to it. She couldn’t afford to keep it at a marina and it was too small for her to do more than just float close to shore. When the weather wasn’t too bad and the waves weren’t too rough, she would sit in the shallows of the sea in her rowboat, which she had found abandoned on this beach. Sometimes, she would imagine having a bigger boat and voyaging away from this place.

But today, as she was drifting and daydreaming, the sound of frantic splashing broke her from her usual peace. Looking around, Rey spotted the source and her heart fluttered in a panic.

It looked like something was entangled in the line connecting a crab trap to a buoy. She had heard of whales being the unfortunate victims of this fate but wondered if a whale would come this close to shore. She bit her lip as she tried to get a better look.

Suddenly, something emerged from the water, reaching to get free of the line. A hand. A _human_ hand.

“I’ll help you,” she called out, then directed her rowboat towards the buoy.

Reaching the man, she leaned out of the boat to the line where his arm had been caught. She wasn’t sure how he did this to himself, but luckily, she had a small knife on her for such a thing. It wasn’t the first time she had to cut a wire or rope away. With a pull on the line, it snapped and went slack, freeing the arm.

Then she turned to look down in the water. “That was close,” she said, preparing to offer the man a ride back to shore.

He was young, and maybe about her age – she had always been terrible at making guesses. His face was handsome, she thought to herself before feeling embarrassed. His skin was darker than anything she had seen on the island, and his eyes, also a deep brown, were wide with shock.

But what startled Rey the most wasn’t the human part. No, frightened, the man dived into the water, revealing a fish-like tail and dorsal fin following behind him. His dark skin was the perfect tone to vanish under the murky water and within seconds, he was gone.

With her expression probably matching the young man’s – _merman,_ her mind corrected – Rey briefly wondered if she was still daydreaming or if she had accidentally fallen into the water and was seeing a dying dream. As she rowed back to shore and walked back home and made her dinner of the trout, Rey realized that she probably hadn’t been dreaming this up. There had been stories like this for generations, though she had never heard a story about male merfolk. The stories had always talked about beautiful, naked, half-fish ladies.

Now, Rey had her own story of a beautiful, naked, half-fish man and she would likely tell no one about it.

* * *

The next day, as she was digging at a clam bed, the merman returned.

There had been stories of creatures like him luring humans close to the water and dragging them under to drown them, to _devour_ them, so Rey was wary. She walked close to where he waved to her from the tide pools and observed him.

When she wouldn’t come closer, even as he urged her to, the merman stopped and nodded as if he understood. Then he held something up, waved it at her, placing it down on a rock tall enough for him to reach but one that stayed out of the water. He gestured for her to approach and backed away himself.

Curiosity winning over her caution, Rey scooped up the object on the rock and realized that it was an oyster shell that had already been opened. She unhinged it to find a single pearl sitting inside.

No one had given her a gift before. Not since her parents died. Her heart warmed in her chest.

“Thank you,” she told the merman, loud enough so that he could hear her.

He shook his head, then crossed his arms across his chest before uncrossing them and holding his arms out, palms up and open. It was a gesture of thanks, one she translated to, “No. Thank _you.”_

“Can you speak?” she asked.

The merman shook his head.

“But you can understand me?” she clarified.

He nodded in a positive.

So that meant that if she wanted to talk to him, they were strictly on a _yes/no_ basis. She wasn’t sure if he would stick around, but he didn’t seem like any threat to her.

“Are you from around here?” she asked, coming closer to the water.

He shook his head.

“OK… Do you have family around here?”

Again, another shake of the head.

She wondered if he was lonely being the only merman around the island, though she wondered if perhaps merfolk were solitary creatures. Getting a better look at his lower half, she thought that his bright yellow scales, flecked with areas of silver and black, resembled a tropical fish more than any species around here. Local varieties usually came in dull, neutral colors to hide in the dark, murky waters of the ocean.

If he was from warmer waters, why would he come to this island in the north, of all places?

Something told her that no matter how many questions she asked, a simple yes or no would never cover it.

* * *

The merman visited her every day and soon she became so accustomed to his companionship that her day felt off without his presence. Obviously, he wasn’t much of a talker, so Rey made conversation for the both of them. He would lounge in the sun or help her look for clam beds when the tide was low and he was comfortable enough to drag himself up to the beach for a little while. And as she talked, he would listen. Sometimes, he would nod or shake his head. Sometimes, he would make this breathy laughter when she made a joke or said something nasty about Plutt.

They ate their meals together in the shallow cave where she hid her rowboat, the merman hoisting himself up to the edge to sit next to her as he ate his catch for the day. His diet consisted of fish and sea plants, and everything was eaten raw, which Rey found a little gross, but that didn’t seem to phase him.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she finally said one day. “But I thought of a name to call you. I know it’s not your own, but it feels wrong to not call you by something.” She felt a little bashful. “So I was thinking of calling you _Finn._ It’s not creative and pretty common around here, but I always liked the name.” Then she suddenly laughed. “Also, you’ve got fins.” She made a gesture to mirror the way his tail moved in the water.

A wide array of emotions transitioned across his face. Surprise. Gratitude. Dare she hope, joy? His only response was a smile as he leaned in to kiss her on the cheek, shocking her in the process. His lips were cool against her skin, but she welcomed the gesture.

She guessed that meant that he was fine with the name, and she tried to keep herself from smiling shyly over the fact. Every time she thought of him, it was with nothing but affection. When she voiced her frustration with the men in town not leaving her alone, Finn looked crestfallen and angry. There was something in his eyes when he gazed at her, but she couldn't find the right word to describe it. All she knew was that she liked that look and wanted Finn to keep looking at her like that.

A month after she rescued him, Finn presented her with another pearl, and every month after he would gift her with another. She joked to herself that soon, she would be able to fit in with the rich women from the mainland that sometimes visited.

During this time, Finn and Rey tried create a series of hand signals to communicate with each other. It was trial and error most days, leading to a bunch of laughs, but they were getting a system down.

When summer rolled around and the waters warmed up, Rey dipped her bare foot into the ocean and decided it was safe enough for her to swim with him.

“I can’t go as far as you, or as deep,” she told him, “but shallow water and for a short time won’t hurt.”

Finn waited patiently as she shucked out of her clothes. He held out his hands to her as she entered the water in her undergarments.

When they were deeper into the water, Finn pointed down in a repeated tapping motion to try to tell her something.

“Under?” she asked.

He nodded.

Taking a deep breath, Rey slipped her head under the water and watched as Finn followed. Still able to stand up, he made sure that their linked hands remained at the surface.

“Are you cold?” A warm and deep voice filled her ears, the accent unfamiliar to her. She gasped and swallowed water as she choked.

Finn’s eyes widened. “Oh, no.” He led her upper body back to the surface.

Coughing on sea water, Rey tried to catch her breath. “Y-you can speak-k underw-water?” Her nose and throat stung.

His grin was a little sheepish, and he shrugged.

Well, it wasn’t like she would have stuck her head under freezing water before. Even in the spring, the water was too cold. She wouldn’t have figured that out on her own, probably. 

“So, can you tell me how you came to be here now?” She took a deep breath again and plunged her head in.

Rey heard his voice again. “I… well, I left my people. They… they did some terrible things… killed a lot of animals. I wasn't born to them, but I was forced to fight for them. And when I had the chance, I swam for it but I had to get as far away as possible. I’m – what’s the word?” He trailed off.

Surfacing again, she asked him, “A defector? Is that the word?” She heard the term get tossed around by the locals, usually with disgust because it implied cowardice, but Rey didn't think Finn was a coward. There was a war going on beyond the island, she heard, fought by many countries on multiple continents, but that's all she knew. News from the mainland didn't travel to the island quickly, if it did at all. What she was told was that the island was so isolated and poor that there wasn't a threat that the war would come to them.

Thinking about it for a moment, Finn nodded his head.

“How do you understand me? What’s your real name?”

Underwater, he replied, “I spent time around humans before. We listen to your language, learn it. That’s how we know if trouble is coming.” He looked a little sad as he said this. “But my name is not something I think you can pronounce…”

She would take his word for it.

On the surface again, she took another deep breath and waited for her lungs to stop hurting so much. “I don’t think I can keep holding my breath like that over and over yet, Finn. It kind of hurts. Maybe for a few times during the day?”

Rey had an idea to simply lower one of her ears underwater this time. Finn caught on.

“That’s sounds like a good idea. I don’t want you to get hurt.” He paused for a moment as if hesitating, gripping her hand in his. “I really like you, Rey.”

“I like you too, Finn," she replied as he surfaced again, and then feeling a little brave, leaned him to kiss him on the lips.

For weeks now, she wondered what they would feel like on hers. Cool, soft, a little wet with a taste of sea salt. It was a chaste kiss, but when she pulled back and looked at him again, he was smiling.

She waited for him to do something to tell her that he approved of that. Instead of gesturing her back underwater, he placed an arm around her shoulders and kissed her cheek before he kissed her lips again.

* * *

It was two months later, when the waters were at its warmest all year, that Finn asked Rey if she would try to swim with him a little farther than usual.

Now that clamming season was over, Rey had taken a temporary job in town working on the fishing ships, sometimes going out with them. That meant that she didn’t get as much time to see Finn during the day, but she knew he was always close by. He knew why she was terrified of going so far out to sea and he hoped that his presence there would assure her that he wouldn’t allow anything to happen to her, even if they couldn’t talk or touch each other during those times.

It was the start of her weekend and the days were longer and the nights were warmer, so even though she was nervous about deeper waters, she also wanted to spend all her free time with Finn. She told him she would go with him to wherever he wanted after she had eaten her dinner.

It was a short swim to the other side of the beach where humans couldn’t walk to. Surrounded by water, Finn made sure that Rey kept her head surfaced until they came to a cliff. He pointed down, telling her that he wanted to dive.

She was improving time with how long she had to hold her breath each week and if Finn felt that she could do it, she trusted him. He wouldn’t let her drown.

Once she was fully submerged, she felt Finn grab for her hands and placed one on the dorsal fin and the other on the side of his abdomen, then, once he was satisfied that she was holding on and not going to accidentally get separated from him, he swam forward. With him propelling them both, the swim through a small cavern went fast. She wouldn’t have managed to get there that quickly by herself.

He was careful not to bump her into the side of the cavern, which sloped upward until the water ended and Rey could breathe air again. She looked around to find that the cavern continued to slope slightly before it flattened out. She found a few items that caught her interest. On the slope lay a bed of seaweed and on the flat surface, and she saw a couple of old bowls filled with clams, a strange-looking spear, and two fur pelts. One of the pelts was a deep brown and lay on the ground like a rug, and the other was a sleek black and looked like it had been altered to fit like a coat. She recognized the speckles on the brown one to realize it was seal fur.

“Do you live here?” she asked.

Finn tugged her hand again, and she lowered her ear to the water.

“Yeah,” he said. “Found it when I first got here. There’s a lot of fish around this part of the island and I prefer to not sleep out in the open. Especially when winter gets here.”

“Are the pelts to keep you warm, then?”

He nodded and then helped her to the dry part of the cavern, pulling himself up party so that his tail still lounged in the water.

They spent the evening talking and playing around. Finn even showed her some shells and stones that he had found around the island, finding that the aesthetic of them suited his tastes for the cavern. She asked him about the pearls, which he brought to her each month without fail.

“Pearls are special gifts,” he told her. “To thank someone for a great service or given to the person you love the most.”

That gave her pause.

“The first time you gave me one was out of gratitude for rescuing you, right?” she asked.

Finn nodded.

“And after that?” She now had six pearls in total lying at home in a special box hidden with the glass float.

He put his hand gently to her cheek and looked her in the eyes. After a lingering moment, he arched a finger back and forth to beckon her to put her ear to the water.

“I love you, Rey.”

He kissed her in a way that they hadn’t quite tried yet. It was passionate and warm, even as Rey half-lounged in the cool water, against the slope of the cavern. The difference in it set her stomach fluttering with want. She had felt this before, when she thought about Finn and kissing him, but never with this intensity and urgency. 

When she peeled off her wet underclothes later that night, she realized what was going to happen. The way Finn looked at her revealed skin, gazing at her with a tenderness that no one else had ever glanced at her with, Rey realized that she was glad she planned to stay in the cavern for the night. With certainty and a case of nerves, she approached the water again.

The next morning, she found that Finn had wrapped her up in the brown pelt sometime in the night and she turned her head to find him asleep beside her on the bed of seaweed that he had made for himself to help keep his skin damp. She brought the fur closer to her face and sighed at the softness against her skin. Close to Finn and content, she lulled herself back to sleep for a few more hours.

* * *

Summer came and went, and in the fall when Rey went back to clamming, the ocean became too cool to swim in again. She missed spending nights with Finn in the cavern, but at least now she could see him while she worked.

“I’ll figure out a way for us to talk to one another,” she told him. “Something that can hold water up to my ear and you can talk through it. I won’t be able to hear you in the winter. I’ll freeze.”

Finn’s face fell, and he pulled the black fur coat more securely around him. He had worn it more as the waters cooled, but Rey also wondered if there was something he was trying to hide from her. She wouldn’t mention to it directly, but she noticed that he was eating more and collecting more shellfish than he had in the earlier months. He was gaining weight. That wouldn’t bother her so much since he was already thin to begin with, but the sudden gain was clear, like his body was now trying to store fat. She had seen animals undergo a similar transformation around this time of year and it made her suspicious.

"Is there something you’re not telling me?” she asked.

With a sigh, he beckoned her to the water.

“I’m going to be gone for a while…”

He then explained that merpeople hibernated in the winter – at least, the ones from colder climates did. It would only be until spring, he promised. When the waters warmed again, he would be back, but the entire winter, he’d either be sleeping or eating. In fact, hibernation was like a constant state of being half-asleep. It would go by quickly for him and he probably wouldn’t remember what he had done when he was awake during the time.

But being alone during the coldest, darkest months frightened Rey, and that thought shocked her. Until this year, she had always been alone. A couple of months would be nothing and Finn would be back for the rest of the year.

Still, she burst into tears, alarming Finn, who flopped onto the beach to be with her. He gathered her into his arms and kissed at her tears. She burrowed her face into the warmth of the seal fur while Finn stroked her hair.

Later that evening, Rey confessed that if she was just a little stronger and if her bathtub was just a little bigger, she would bring Finn into the warmth of her home for the winter. He laughed at the idea and told her if the situation were plausible, he would let her in a heartbeat.

Autumn went by too quickly.

Finn made sure that Rey could survive the winter without him, fretting over every detail despite knowing that she had always been able to make do all the years before she had met him. Food was plentiful around here in the winter. The ocean provided the island with all the humans needed. She had also recently been able to buy a warmer coat that was lined on the inside and waterproof on the outside. He told her to sell the pearls that he presented her each month if things got too tough, and the idea upset her. Those pearls meant far more to her than just material riches.

But as winter drew closer, Finn became more sluggish by the day. If the sun was out – which was a rarity now – he would lounge on the larger rocks of the beach to catch a little of its warmth. At other times, he would lay on the edge of the beach where Rey hid her rowboat and wait for her to finish with her work for the day. He simply didn’t have the energy to help her anymore.

The day he looked like he could barely stay awake, Rey knew it was time. After she finished work for the day, she sat with him in her arms and waited for sundown. Every once in a while, kisses were exchanged, and they found that no matter how much they touched one another, it didn’t feel like enough.

She brought her bag closer and pulled out the glass float she had once found on the shore. “I found it here years ago and couldn’t bring myself to sell it,” she told him. The colors of the glass matched the colors of the calm sea at the moment. “I think you should hold on to it until spring. Something to remember me by.”

Finn rolled his eyes at that last bit, as if he _could_ forget her. But he nodded his head and set the bulb in his lap.

“I love you, Finn.”

He turned around to look at her, lingering as if trying to memorize every detail. His hands wandered to her hair where a couple of loose stands fell from her buns, then they drifted to her cheeks and gently stroked the skin there.

Leaning in, Finn pressed their foreheads together before closing his eyes and kissing her. It was quiet and not with the same amount of energy that Finn had kissed her back in the summer months, but it was deep, even soothing, like he was trying to get a winter’s worth of affection.

He held her hand as he dipped himself back into the water, holding the glass float in his other. When he got too far for her to hold on to anymore, he let go and turned back to wave at her.

After he vanished into the sea, Rey waited at the beach for a few more minutes, lost in thought. Then, she stood up to go home and thought about how nice it would be to sleep near the fire and came up with a clam chowder recipe that sounded good to her.

* * *

When spring rolled around again, Rey waited patiently for any sign that Finn had woken up. The first week after the spring equinox, there were chilly rainstorms, and she sighed at the fact that the sea had probably not warmed up enough for Finn to return just yet.

She made changes to her little house in the winter to insulate it better and used her free time to make sculptures out of the things that she found washed up on the shore and started to create jewelry out of the stones and shells she would gather. The villagers had taken a liking to her designs and bought them as gifts when the holiday celebrations drew near. The pearls, meanwhile, were still underneath the loose floorboard, and she kept trying to think of a design for a necklace for herself that would carry at least one of the pearls without anyone eyeing it for its value.

Rey also had started to learn more about fixing ships as she spent more and more time around the marina. One of Plutt’s workers, an older man, but one of the nicer ones in the village would teach her something new in exchange for a good joke. She spent her working hours trying to come up with new ones. The idea she had was that maybe as she got better, she could do repairs for others and charging them enough so that she could survive off of that work instead of being outside every day searching for shellfish. If she was no longer under the mercy of Plutt and his employment, she could perhaps set her own hours and afford nicer things. Then she could choose when to be with Finn and maybe figure out a way to be near him even in the winter.

On the first day when the sun broke through the clouds and the world seemed a little less gray, Rey decided it was nice enough to finally lower her rowboat back into the water and sit in it.

But when she got there, she gasped and excitement filled her.

In the rowboat sat the glass float.

Reminding her of the time they first met, Rey pushed the rowboat into the water and lounged inside it, basking in the warmth of the sun as she waited.


End file.
